Wednesday, April 16, 2008

That's his story and he's sticking to it

When I opened the mail at work yesterday, I found that a check written to us by a customer had bounced. Well, it didn't bounce; he had actually put a stop payment on it. Everyone was shocked. It was a sizable amount of money, but as far as we knew, he was completely satisfied with the merchandise he had purchased.

Some poor schmuck (not me, luckily) had to call the customer to find out what was going on. Here's the story as it was related to me by the poor schmuck who talked to the customer:

PS: So, I talked to that guy about his check. He says it was all a mistake.

Me: A mistake? Like a bank error?

PS: Well, no. Not exactly. His story is that he put a stop payment on the wrong check.

Me: The wrong check?

PS: Yeah. He had ordered something from another company and it never arrived, so he tried to put a stop payment on that check and accidentally did our check instead.

Me: *blink* *blink* So, did you ask him HOW STUPID DOES HE THINK WE ARE?

In my limited experience with stopping payment on check, I would have to conclude that is it virtually impossible to stop payment on the wrong check. The bank asks for the check number, the amount, the date of the check, and the payee. So unless he wrote a check on the exact same day, for the exact same amount, paid to a company whose name is almost exactly like ours, there's no way it could be a mistake.

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

My suspicions that he's a liar were further confirmed when he wasn't able to make good on the check when the "error" was brought to his attention. He had another convoluted story/excuse as to why he couldn't make good on the check which involved his having inadvertently overdrawn his account by $10 due to an ATM fee.

Yeah, right. Just keep digging that hole. We're all laughing at your transparent falsehoods and crazy stories anyway. The important part is that you pay us the money you owe. By the way, for your convenience was accept all major credit cards.